A language, by definition, is a semiotic process through
which thought may be conveyed, but a language system (or linguistic system)
enables a response to that thought using the degrees and kinds of signs and
signifiers produced by the language. Film uses not only words, but also
different kinds of shots, angles and speeds; therefore, while the audience can
react to a film's semantic intent, that audience cannot address its concerns
regarding the film in the same language the film used to convey its argument.
For that reason, Robert Stam, Robert Burgoyne, and Sandy Flitterman-Lewis
advance Christian Metz’s argument that while the means by which film expresses
itself to its audience constitutes a language, it cannot constitute a linguistic
system. Metz argues that

one might call ‘language’…any unity defined in
terms of its matter of expression…Literary language, in this sense, is
the set of messages whose matter of expression is writing; cinematic
language is the set of messages whose matter of expression consists of
five tracks or channels: moving photographic image, recorded phonetic
sound, recorded noises, recorded musical sound, and writing…Thus
cinema is a language in the sense that it is a ‘technico-sensorial
unity’ graspable in perceptual experience. (37)

The language of cinema, as a result, cannot be answered by
the language of literature because the two systems use different modes of
expression. In support of this point, Raymond Bellour argues that film is the
"Unattainable Text":

the film-text, unlike the literary text, is not ‘quotable.’
Whereas literature and literary criticism share the same medium –
words – film and film analysis do not. While the film medium entails
five tracks – image, dialogue, noise, music, written materials – the
analysis of the film consists of a single track – words. Critical
language is therefore inadequate to its object; the film always escapes
the language that attempts to constitute it. (56)

To appropriately respond to a film, consequently, one would
have to generate a film of his or her own using the same methods employed by the
director in a manner dialogic to the film being addressed, and this is
problematic for most of the viewing audience. In spite of our inability to
respond to a film in its language through natural means of discourse,
understanding the nature of film semiotics makes us critically aware of the
language being used, and that results in an enhanced understanding of the way in
which film is representative of cultural and counter-cultural values.

The book is divided into five parts, the first of which
develops the terminology and history of semiotics in a chapter entitled
"The Origins of Semiotics." It begins with an introduction of two
seemingly interchangeable terms: semiology and semiotics. The former is defined
by Ferdinand de Saussure as:

A science that studies the life of signs within
society is conceivable; it would be a part of social psychology, I shall
call it semiology (from Greek semeion ‘sign’). Semiology would show
what constitutes signs, what laws govern them. (Course in General
Linguistics 4)

The latter is derived from Charles Sanders Pierce, who
proffered a similar definition of the term (4). Regardless of this semantic
distinction in terminology, Stam et al. explains that the "sign is for
Saussure the central fact of language, and the primordial opposition of
signifier/signified constitutes the founding principle of structural
linguistics" (8). The dichotomy between these two is reconciled in the
following formula:

The identity of any linguistic sign is determined by
the sum total of paradigmatic [involving choosing] and syntagmatic
[involving combining] relations into which it enters with other
linguistic signs in the same language system. (9)

The Paradigmatic is defined as "a virtual or ‘vertical’
set of units which have in common the fact that they entertain relations of
similarity and contrast," and the Syntagmatic4 deals with
"the sequential characteristics of speech, their ‘horizontal’
arrangement into a signifying whole" (9). This formula loosely resembles
the linguistic system of Tagmemics, wherein diction and syntax are construed in
a slot-plus-class (syntagm-plus-paradigm) relationship, which enables them to be
better understood in their functional grammatology.

The use that Stam makes of this in its relationship to
cinematic forms lies in the concept of translinguistics, which entails a
"theory of the role of signs in human life and thought" (13), in that
signs have multiple significances depending on the views of conflicting classes.
This multi-accentuality4 is "the capacity of the sign to elicit
variable social tones and ‘evaluations’ as it is deployed within specific
social and historical conditions" (13). In contrast to Saussure’s
structuralism, Derrida proposed a vision that went beyond
it--post-structuralism. This line of thought "demonstrated a thoroughgoing
distrust of any centered, totalizing theory, a radical skepticism about the
possibility of constructing a metalanguage which might position, stabilize or
explain all of the other discourses, since the signs of the metalanguage are
themselves subject to slippage and indeterminacy" (23). By entailing
"a critique of the concepts of the stable sign, of the unified subject, of
identity and of truth" (23), post-structuralism

exists in both continuity and rupture with
structuralism. It shares the structuralist premise of the determining,
constitutive role of language, and generally continues within the
structuralist problematic, especially the assumption that signification
is based on difference. At the same time, it rejects structuralism’s
‘dream of scientificity,’ its hopes of stabilizing the play of
difference within an all-encompassing master-system. (27)

The Saussure-Derrida disagreement’s significance to film is
discussed in the second chapter entitled "Cine-Semiology," in which
Christian Metz is introduced by way of transition.

The question which oriented Metz’s early work was
whether the cinema was Langue (language system) or Language (language)
and his well-known conclusion…was that the cinema was not a language
system but that it was a language. (34)

His argument is that "langue is a system of signs
intended for two-way communication, while the cinema allows only for deferred
communication" (34). In today’s world, however, this assertion will
eventually have to be rethought because it does not allow for interactive cinema
(like porn chatrooms) or Internet conference calling where role play is being
done by either party—either of which can technically be considered
film-making, especially if the parts of dialogue and imagery are manipulated to
produce a contrived result. Metz further argues that cinema is not a language
system because "it lacks the equivalent of the arbitrary linguistic
sign," replacing it instead with a ‘motivated’ sign. So, the
relationship between signifier and signified differs from literature to film
(35). Metz argues against the idea that the camera/cinematic shot is like the
word while the sequence is like the sentence. He states as evidence that
"(1) shots are infinite in number…(2) shots are the creations of the
film-maker…(3) the shot provides an inordinate amount of information…(4) the
shot is an actualized unit [meaning that it generates an exact representation of
its intended meaning]…(and) (5) shots, unlike words, do not gain meaning by
paradigmatic contrast with other shots that might have occurred in the same
place on the syntagmatic chain" (35-6). Also, cinema "does not
constitute a language widely available as a code" (35), for while all
speakers of English can produce English, not all can produce the talent,
training and access produced by filmic utterances (35). Again, this would have
to be qualified in respect to advances in technology that put Internet cameras
on everyone’s desktops or enabled lightweight camcorders to be used in
independent film-making efforts like TheBlair Witch Project. Stam
argues further that language and film are both discursive "through
paradigmatic and syntagmatic operations" (37).

Language selects and combines phonemes and morphemes
to form sentences; film selects and combines images and sounds to form
syntagmas, i.e. units of narrative autonomy in which elements interact
semantically. (37)

The idea that there was one grand syntagmatic code, moreover,
was refuted by others who argued that he was setting up a system too rigid to be
viable. In response, Metz modified his argument to allow room for other
cinematic codes. Stam explains that

like any artistic language, the cinema manifests a
plurality of codes. In cinema, numerous codes remain constant across all
or most films; unlike language, however, film has no ‘master code’
shared by all films. Filmic texts, for Metz, form a structured network
produced by the interweaving of specific cinematic codes, i.e. codes
that appear only in the cinema, and non-specific codes, i.e. codes
shared with languages other than the cinema. (48-9)

The sense Metz makes of these codes, to give meaning to the
plot of any given film, is discussed in the third chapter entitled "Film-narratology."
Within this chapter, Stam explains the means by which the idea of a
lengthy feature film is sold to an audience.

Metz argued that the organization of images into a
narrative was one of the most important ways that film was like a
language. The Grand Syntagmatic sought to designate and classify the
specifically narrative segments of film language, which Metz understood
in terms of sequences of shots, called syntagmas. These eight syntagmas
[see footnote above], which were distinguished primarily through
editing, expressed the spatial temporal and logical connections that
form the universe of the fabula. (79)

Implicit in the need for a cohesive plot structure driven by
a recognizable and powerful theme lies the necessity for these syntagmas to be
sutured, or stitched, together in a way that enhances the flow of the film and
generates the realism necessary for the audience to maintain credulity. The way
in which those shots are sutured together is another form of communication
between the film and its audience, but it is not a dialogue any more than the
actors on the screen are influenced by the mood of the spectators sitting in the
theater5. By choosing how to cut the story the film is trying to
relate to the viewer, the director decides how that story is going to speak to
the outside world.

That the outside world responds to film in a certain way is
predicated upon its having been pre-conditioned through an innate desire to find
the self in the gaze of the other. The fourth chapter, entitled
"Psychoanalysis," describes one of the aims of psychoanalytic film
theory as "a systematic comparison of the cinema as a specific kind of
spectacle and the structure of the socially and psychically constituted
individual" (123). Stam explains

If psychoanalysis examines the relations of the
subject in discourse, then psychoanalytic film theory meant integrating
questions of subjectivity into notions of meaning-production. Moreover,
it meant that film-viewing and subject-formation were reciprocal
processes: something about our unconscious identity as subjects is
reinforced in film viewing, and film viewing is effective because of our
unconscious participation. Moving from the interpretation of individual
films to a systematic comprehension of the cinematic institution itself,
some film theorists saw psycho-analysis as a way of accounting for the
cinema’s immediate and pervasive social power. For them the cinema ‘reinscribes’
those very deep and globally structuring processes which form the human
psyche, and it does so in such a way that we continually yearn to repeat
(or re-enact) the experience. (124)

The idea that individuals can be influenced by films that
mirror their latent desires within a broad range of their birth culture is
interesting in the sense that it defines the culture as the macrocosm of the
individual. It further seems to explain the voyeurism and vicarious living
undergone by each audience member who sits alone surrounded by a crowd of other
people who are alone, too. Theaters, therefore, are not social gathering places
in the sense of a community’s coming together to enjoy a shared experience.
They are, rather, places in which the lone individual, even if surrounded by his
or her friends, can experience nascent predilections and explore formative
moments within or outside of the safety of his or her own cultural norms.
Spectators are able to do this as individuals either because they have already
developed beyond the confines of their own understanding of the world and,
therefore, are open to the suggestions of others that lay outside their realms
of experience, or because they have yet to grow beyond their earliest
attachments and rediscover those within the context of film.

This idea of the self as both a part of culture and as an
autonomous unit with a very specific inner sense of identity helps us recognize
the effect any given sequence of images may have upon us and distinguish the
roles played by those images in relation to dominant cultural values. The book
concludes with a chapter entitled "From Realism to Intertextuality,"
which lists the Comolli and Narboni taxonomy of the possible relations between a
film and the dominant ideology of the culture in which the film was made. These
include:

In each of these film types, there is a means for the
spectator to either identify with or rebel against the image offered. The choice
the movie offers is not necessarily compatible with the spectator’s ability to
answer back with the language of the ideology, just like there is no possibility
of the spectator’s being able to answer back in the language of the cinema.
However, the spectator’s reaction to those choices helps that spectator define
his or her place in that culture in comparison to or contrast with the values
being witnessed. The signs and signifiers of the film media can, therefore, be
accessed and responded to even though they engage the audience in a language the
audience itself cannot speak.

Works Cited

Stam, Robert, Robert Burgoyne, and Sandy Flitterman-Lewis. New
Vocabularies in Film Semiotics: Structuralism, Post-Structuralism and Beyond.
New York: Routledge, 1992.